


beneath a further sky

by monsooned (leovenus)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Female My Unit | Byleth, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Church Route, Goddess Tower (Fire Emblem), Hints of Edeleth if you squint, Post-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:14:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24879799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leovenus/pseuds/monsooned
Summary: Sothis, could I turn back this much time?Byleth and Linhardt, the night after returning to Garreg Mach.
Relationships: Linhardt von Hevring/My Unit | Byleth
Kudos: 30





	beneath a further sky

**Author's Note:**

> This story is the product of (a) me wanting to dig around in Byleth's psyche after Edelgard leaves, and (b) my love for Linhardt. Byleth is female because my unit ingame is female, but this would read equally with M!Byleth.
> 
> I'm still on my first playthrough (Chapter 16 as of just now, when I forced myself to put my Switch down to finish this), so I apologise if there's anything that doesn't add up in the endgame.

The goddess tower is a bastion of quiet at this time of the night.

Byleth takes the stairs two at a time, something almost feral pushing her upwards. Like she will have peace if she can see the sky untainted. She'd missed the chance, earlier.

_Edelgard_. Edelgard -

It makes her slow to a crawl as she takes the last few steps. Duty, simmering thick in her veins, had pushed her through the fight with Imperial forces. But now that there is space - time to think -

_Hearing_ it had been five years was one thing. Seeing the girl she had known for her tenacity and devotion to almost childishly pure ideals so haunted, so much colder…

"Professor." A soft, melodic voice. "Fancy seeing you here."

Byleth startles out of her thoughts, tripping on the last step up. The earth slides away from under her feet - she tips over, eyes widening, and prepares to hit the ground in a roll if need be -

Until she doesn't. Instead, there are hands supporting her by the elbow. As soon as she is stable her weight is gently shifted back so she recovers her equilibrium. Her unexpected companion takes a step back and waits.

Embarrassed, Byleth averts her gaze. Dark green hair almost reminiscent of hers before Sothis. "Linhardt."

She sees, out of her peripheral vision, the way he shifts back onto one leg. He's grown, she realises. There is a sobriety to his posture that had not been there before. Something like sorrow twists in her chest.

_Five years..._

"Professor," he echoes, humour evident in his voice. "You didn't make a sound as you fell."

It was something Jeralt had said, wasn't it? _The child never cries. Never makes a sound._ "Habit," she says vaguely, peering up at him through her bangs. Linhardt has always had a way of looking at her like he is tugging at the strands of a mystery. A Gordian knot, perhaps. But where should the cut be made?

He's doing it now, that slow measured gaze and slightly furrowed brow. Byleth fidgets.

"I'm not - something to be studied, Linhardt," she finds herself saying, which is odd. She doesn't remember having any strong feelings before Jeralt died. "And I'm not your professor anymore." Garreg Mach as they knew it has fallen. Their academy has ceased to exist.

So had she, for a while.

Avoiding his gaze, she steps around him and heads towards the tall stone arches, gazing out to where the moon smiles wanly down over their fallen fortress.

Even in the depth of night she doesn’t need to try too hard to see the view. Taking a deep breath, Byleth closes her eyes. There - the tower where she'd humour Sylvain's requests for extra lessons, just to get him to do some actual work. The corridor where she'd encountered Dimitri awkwardly turning down a confession as Felix passed by and scoffed. The gazebo where she had tea with each one of them, where Dorothea could sometimes be found singing to the enchantment of passers-by.

Her eyes flare open. She'd been wrong. The sky is doing very little to ease her scattered thoughts. Instead she feels, to her horror, a prickling sensation behind her eyes that feels a lot like the prelude to grief. _Sothis, could I turn back this much time?_

The voice in her head is silent. She'd heard it earlier on the edges of consciousness, she's positive - but she's truly alone in her mind now, she can tell. The dread in her chest only grows larger.

"P - Byleth." Linhardt has stepped up to join her by the other pillar bracketing the arch, maintaining a moderate distance between them. She finds her brief fight from earlier has left her. "I'm sorry if it seemed like I don't treat you as a person."

He is speaking slowly, but stops now, exhaling in lengths before continuing. "I do - very much so, in fact."

She chances a glance at him. Linhardt is staring straight back, face carefully schooled. Only the slightest quiver of his lip betrays any emotion.

Byleth gentles. "It's okay, Linhardt," she says, then offers a halfhearted grin. She remembers Bernadetta squealing in shock and running away when she'd first seen the expression. "Just… a lot on my mind, that's all."

Linhardt looks at her properly now, gaze lighting on her eerily pale hair. There is a sorrowful cast to his otherwise impassive features. "Where were you for all these years?" He seems to weigh his words before he continues.

"We thought - I thought -” He seems to remember himself. “No, never mind. It's not important."

"That I had died?" Byleth supplies.

He nods a fraction, jaw tight, and it makes her exhale a huff that almost feels like laughter. "No. Well. I think I did. Just for a while, at least. I woke up this morning at the base of the mountain. To think somehow so many years had passed…"

That melancholy she thought she had glimpsed earlier crystallises. As much as she herself has never been one for emotion, it startles her now, to see Linhardt so bare of his carefully constructed indifference.

"You don't know how grateful I am that you've returned," he admits. "I came back on a fool's hope. Even though it was a childish promise..."

Even though the one who had decreed it was the one who had left them all behind. It's easier to distill everything down to this, to cope: that one of their own had left. When it comes to beliefs Byleth can understand Edelgard’s conviction, but that does nothing to erase the sting of betrayal.

She smiles, wanly. "I am glad to see you here again as well."

"Again?" Confusion, then - a light sparks in his eyes. The moon peering outwards in a cloudy sky. "The Heron Cup."

"You and your research," Byleth nods. She holds out her arm. "Come to take samples from me again?"

Linhardt splutters, eyes growing large. "I never took - I'm not Professor Hanneman - I'd need someone else to do it, too - _ugh_ , blood - hmm, but - oh, can I _really_?" Tentatively, his hand comes out to rest on her gloved hand, thumb on the border between leather and skin.

Byleth stares him down, holding his gaze for a few solid beats. Very slowly, she raises an eyebrow.

The colour floods immediately into his face, sitting prettily on his cheeks. "Oh," Linhardt says faintly. "A joke."

His hand flies to his face as he buries his head in his palm. Quietly, he lets out a sound like an insufficiently oiled door. Byleth almost feels bad.

“I apologise,” Linhardt says, with all the etiquette of nobility. “But that was _mean_. I mean, who knows if it’s related to how you slumbered for so long. It’s a gift, really, would be such a privilege to examine in greater detail….” As he speaks he’s slowly drawn his head to the side to rest on his hand. He slides a look over to Byleth, sulky.

The familiarity in the midst of a world of ruin makes her think of spring water on a boiling summer’s day. The gurgling of a brook. Along the wayside on a trek into hell - sometimes you can find some light.

Byleth can’t help it - she laughs.

It’s not something she does often. Still, she can’t say she’d anticipated the way he freezes, eyes going wide as he looks at her. Once it’s out, though, it only grows larger, forcing its way out of her chest in bursts until Linhardt is looking more and more bewildered and she can almost hear Sothis testily lecturing her on how _You’re embarrassing me, you know? Could you grow some propriety for_ once _?_

There it is, another pang of longing for days gone past. Even if she had known as she was doing it that the bout of laughter was more catharsis than actual humour, Byleth sobers up immediately, the last dredges of amusement gone.

“You - laughed,” Linhardt says dumbly.

Byleth wipes at a stray tear, and isn’t sure of its source. “I guess I did,” she agrees. “Just making sure everything’s still working after all the disuse.” Her voice cracks on the last word. She presses her lips tightly together and turns back to look out on the courtyard, praying to the gods - _Sothis, lend me a hand here -_ that he doesn’t notice.

“Prof - Byleth,” Linhardt starts. And then says nothing more.

Maybe she should leave. He had most likely been enjoying a night of quiet before she had appeared and they had fallen sideways into this conversation, senseless like a battle between two perfectly evenly matched swordsmen. She needs time to process, too.

But no sooner has she steeled her resolve to leave and save the last of her dignity than does Linhardt break the silence next. “When I was home,” he tells her, sounding oceans and war-torn lands away. “I would not fight, nor did my father expect it of me. All I could do was read every book I could get my hands on.”

She doesn’t quite follow the change in topic, but glances at him to show she’s listening. Leans just a hairsbreadth closer.

“It might surprise you, but even I grew weary of research all the time.” He pauses for dramatic effect, and she humours him with a mock gasp of horror.

“And?”

Linhardt flashes her a small, genuine smile. It looks grateful. “And so I asked some of the castle scholars about stories they had come across. Actual stories, works spun of fiction and fancy. Not histories in the least.”

“I was surprised to find them enjoyable. I used to think that they could only be appreciated from a technical standpoint, and thought it strange that people would read them in their free time. But in those lonely days they were a friend, and I realised that I had been wrong.”

He shakes his head ruefully, then sighs. “I digress. The point I wanted to say was this - there was a line that I read in a novel that stuck with me.”

Linhardt meets her gaze, eyes bright with the glimmer of the moon. “It’s strange, isn’t it? The story itself meant very little, and the bindings were rather inferior - but there was a gem nestled within to be carried close to the chest. It’s - It’s what kept me waiting for this day to come.” He takes a breath.

“It led me back to you.”

Byleth realises, then, how different the toll of years had been. To her it had only been a moment’s sleep. To the rest of them -

“What was it?”

Linhardt smiles again, like she’s passed an unknown test. “ _They sat together in the boundless night, waiting with certainty for dawn_ ,” he quotes. “And it did come, I would like to think. It was the last line of the book.”

Byleth finds her voice. “Do you think it will?” she asks, softly. “Am I to lead the way?”

“There will be a cost,” Linhardt warrants. “But I believe it will. Maybe we all rely too much on you as a symbol of hope, but if it is the Crest of Flames that lights us, then know that we will blaze with you.”

It both frightens and warms her, the unshakeable faith he seems to have. She wants to pay it back.

“Linhardt,” Byleth says. “Thank you. For - ” she gestures, her habitual ineloquence returning. “For telling me.”

She watches as his expression openly cycles through surprise, then embarrassment, before settling on something pleased with a hint of warmth. “Thank you for listening,” he says. “And forgive me, but I have one more thing to ask of you.”

She could never begrudge him anything he asked. Byleth waits as he swings himself up onto the wide stone berth, and pats the space next to him. “Will you sit with me?”

His hand is extended; she takes it, and joins him in looking out into the night. The sky is clearer than she can remember it being, stars flecking it so brilliantly it is easy to forget that there is anything but peace below the blanket of night.

“Certainly,” she acquiesces, eyes tracing the edge of the sky. She can hear his unspoken question. “I’ll wait with you for dawn.”

“And it will come,” Linhardt says, conviction clear as day. His hand rests warm over hers against the stone.

“So it will,” Byleth murmurs. If she believes it hard enough - perhaps she can will it to be true.

The night is long, and bitterly cold. But at its end, they watch with a weary triumph as day breaks over Fódlan, and know that the sun will rise again.


End file.
